So why am I writing about this? Despite not believing LDS
theology anymore, I still get these itches to deconstruct my past
fundamentalist worldview. Writing it out is good therapy. It's like having been
raised in a religion that believes that Star Trek is real, truly believing it was
real for a few decades and then suddenly realizing that it isn't. (Sorry if
that sounds insulting. I can't think of a less-insulting way to describe how it
feels to me.) Sometimes I just get an overwhelming desire to write out why two-dimensional
space battles with sounds and lasers that travel like slow projectiles make no
sense or that "plasma conduit" is an overused meaningless
thought-terminating cliché. Probably nobody cares what I think about this and
they probably shouldn't. But it feels good to write about all this stuff and
try to unpack it anyway. It was such a big part of my life for so long and I
did firmly believed it until I was 32 years old. Plus, these writings sometimes lead to interesting
conversations with friends when I share my thoughts. I hope I don't offend
anyone with anything I write and I'd love to discuss this stuff with anyone who
can discuss ideas without taking criticism of ideas personally.
To get started, what is the *Justice* vs *Mercy* dichotomy in
LDS theology? Where does it come from? Why did I put asterisks around these
words? Well, *Justice* vs *Mercy* is all a part of the justification for
atonement theology. It holds that *Justice* (a cosmic law of sorts) requires
that any sin (even the smallest) incurs an infinite debt that the perpetrator
cannot possibly pay and will be punished for permanently. The only possible way
to pay the debt is to have a sinless person be an infinite sacrifice. This
satisfies the infinite debt and the person who sinned then is required to do
some things by Jesus (the infinite sacrifice) to take advantage of their debt
being paid off. I put asterisks around the theological concepts to separate
them from their regular dictionary definitions, which I will also use and hopefully
it won't be too confusing because they will look different.
I probably need to stop at this point and point out some
background information. The *Justice* vs *Mercy* dichotomy is a concept that
won't be totally unfamiliar to some flavors of Christianity but in LDS theology
they are really fleshed out in the Book of Mormon in Alma Chapter 42. Reading
that is a good refresher of the LDS stance. Also, non-LDS readers should
probably know that LDS theology states that God and Jesus are separate beings.
LDS people believe in a non-Trinitarian godhead, so when I talk about God and
Jesus as if they are entirely separate, that is because that is how I was
raised and that is the theology I am discussing today.
So as a summary, LDS theology posits that even the smallest
of sins forces the sinner to incur an infinite debt with God. Jesus then steps
in and pays that debt to God and then renegotiates the terms of the debt with
the sinner in a more merciful way. *Justice* is satisfied because the infinite
payment gets made.
The problem I see is that this is a "turtles all the
way down" argument. It doesn't actually explain anything. It just pushes
the problem down lower in the foundation where it isn't as visible. Why does
the tiniest of sins force us to incur an infinite debt with God (which seems
unjust)? Not answered. If Jesus can forgive the debt after paying it, why can't
God just forgive the debt in the first place? Not answered. Why is God bound by
a seemingly unjust law of *Justice* that doesn't allow him to forgive debts
that are owed to him? Not answered. We are left with more quenstions than when
we started.
Now just because we don't understand how the *Justice* vs
*Mercy* dichotomy works, doesn't mean it isn't true. It could very well be, but
it seems very strange that a perfect, just, and loving God would expect us to
believe something that we can't possibly understand. An "Alpha God"
might do that, but not a loving God.
The thing is, justice and mercy are not laws of physics but
guiding moral principles. As such they must have moral utility in order to make
any moral sense.
*Justice* that condemns everyone with an infinite punishment
for the smallest (and finite) infractions doesn't seem just (fair, deserved).
An atonement shouldn't be necessary to make justice just and fair. It should be
baked in there to start with. Again, where does *Justice* come from? How and
why does it bind God? No answers.
Additionally, the concept and very existence of *Justice*
seems to impair self-improvement since it can easily lead to shame,
hopelessness, and perfectionism especially with certain personality types (e.g.
people who suffer from scrupulosity) since it states that even the smallest
infractions makes one fundamentally unacceptable to God. It also leads people
to lose track of the relative importance of large moral principles like
kindness and leads to Pharisaical moral codes. See this talk from ElderBednar, where he gives an example of a man who broke up with a young woman because she didn't take out a second pair of earrings when she was told to, and then to my puzzlement he states that it isn't about earrings. Apparently it is about a person's willingness to make minutiae important. I also once read a Facebook post of the
BYUI president chastising people for wearing pants that show ankle on campus. But really, why not? If
all unatoned infractions lead to infinite punishment, there is really not much
basis to say that one sin is much worse than another. This is actually the
rationale in the American justice system for not giving the death penalty admittedly very heinous crimes like
rape. You don't want a rapist to conclude that there is no down side to
murdering their victims after perpetrating rape (as much as we would like as harsh
a punishment as possible for rapists). Increasing seriousness of crime deserves
increasing seriousness of punishment. At least, that should be the goal if the
punishments are to deter further crimes.
Unfortunately, the skewing of moral priorities has happened in the LDS temple recommend interview over time. There is absolutely no
question asking if the person is kind to others (the second most important moral
principle, according to Jesus) but questions about things like coffee and tea consumption are
viewed as extremely morally important. Let me say that again because it still mystifies me; temple worthiness interviewers don't ask about kindness! This seems at odds with the overarching
messages in the New Testament like those of Jesus telling people to question
the religious dogma of the time and focus on kindness to people over minutiae.
Do the Pharisees reign again? I think that case can be made.
Now one thing that seems interesting to me is that LDS
theology seems to be mixing pecuniary(money)/civil justice and criminal/moral
justice as if they were the same thing. They are not. Let's clarify things.
If I sign a contract with someone and I decide to release
the other party from their obligations in the contract, there is no miscarriage
of justice. I am free to do that (and so is God). Also, a scenario where
someone steps in and pays a debt for someone else is perfectly just, and the
person who pays the debt could do that as part of a new contract. Nothing
unjust there.
However, if someone commits a moral crime against me (and it
seems to make more sense to classify sins as moral crimes, not breaches of
contract), we can't substitute the punishment on someone else. For example,
let's say that I am out for a walk one day and a guy named Doug jumps out of a
bush and gives me a savage beating and then runs off. Someone films it and Doug
is convicted in court. At the sentencing, a guy named Sam who has never broken
the law jumps up in court and volunteers to go to jail for Doug. If the judge
were to accept that, would moral justice be satisfied with that solution?
Thomas Paine says it better than I ever could in The Age of Reason:
"If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge."
The LDS church taught me when I was young that the Holy
Ghost would confirm truths to me, probably through my feelings. The Holy Ghost
has utterly failed to confirm the truth of *Justice* vs *Mercy* to me after
decades of opportunity but this does not mean that I haven't felt confirmatory
feelings of peace with respect to justice and mercy.
When reading Les Miserables, I felt deep in my soul that
many times justice and mercy are one and the same; that they are not
non-overlapping circles on a Venn diagram.
Recently I read A Monster Calls, a book about a young boy
named Connor dealing with the fear of his mother's impending death. Under these
difficult circumstances, he acts out by beating up a schoolyard bully and by
breaking some of his grandmother's possessions. In each instance he is
surprised that no one wants to punish him. In each case, when he asks them why
they aren't going to punish him, the person in authority asks him, "What
could possibly be the point?" I felt the truth of that deep in my bones.
And that is my main sticking point with respect to *Justice*
in LDS theology. What could possibly be the point of small finite infractions
incurring an infinite debt with God? *Justice* creates the (unjust) problem,
requiring a theological Rube Goldberg machine to fix it. Without *Justice*,
there is no problem. God is painted as the ultimate bureaucrat or a slave to
some ultimate bureaucracy. *Justice* makes no sense and explains nothing.
It would make much more sense for a loving God to simply
forgive what warrants forgiving and mete out punishments that are proportional
to the crime with the purpose of teaching. After all, a Father/Mother's love
for a child is the only metaphor I can use to understand a deity's love for
mankind, and that is how I would treat my children. Am I better than God?
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Post Script: A Trinitarian view of God actually makes this problem
seem much smaller than the non-Trinitarian view of God in LDS theology. In the
Trinitarian view, God and Jesus are somewhat the same entity so you have God
sacrificing himself to make things right. Some (but not all) of the problems
disappear.
Interestingly, if you look at the historical record in the
early LDS church the theology seems to have started out as Trinitarian and then
morphed into the theology of "three separate beings." For more
information, see the Lectures on Faith, the original Book of Mormon text that
refers to Mary as "The Mother of God" (later edited to say "The
Mother of the Son of God") and the lack of any written references to "three
separate beings" theology in any sources in the first few years of the LDS
church. I think that is the background that makes the multiple versions of the
first vision disturbing to the faith of some people. However, I think that Alma
42 was written with a Trinitarian view of the Godhead in mind, so it probably
didn't originally have as much baggage as it came to have later, as the
theology evolved.
